What is a good way of track link clicks in Asp.Net Core 7 MVC app in Application Insights?

Question

I have an MVC app with several <a> tags, and I want to have a way of tracking link clicks, preferably without doing redirects (i.e., without changing link addresses). Is there any way this can be done? and the link clicks are tracked on Application Insights. And, if not, is there any way one can get this functionality with some work around?

Answer 1

AI allows custom events. We don't use AI directly but we use Google Analytics and we have the same requirement. What you do is have your link call a javascript function in your code that records the event in AI (from the client side) and then redirect. This doesn't change the link, it just changes it to call JS first.

If you need to do this for a lot of links (or all of them) then I would recommend you create a generally reusable function that accepts the URL (and possibly additional data if you need more info) and generates the event followed by the redirect. Then either update all your links to call the helper function (if there are a couple) or use jQuery (or equivalent) to inject the call into your links after the document loads.

Answer 2

you would use the javascript application insights sdk:

https://github.com/microsoft/ApplicationInsights-JS

note: net 7 support ended 5/14/2024

Answer 3

I want to have a way of tracking link clicks, preferably without doing redirects (i.e., without changing link addresses). Is there any way this can be done? and the link clicks are tracked on Application Insights.

Hi @Astha Gangwar , you can try to enable and use the Click Analytics plug-in with Application Insights that can help automatically tracks click events on webpages.

For more information about Click Analytics Plugin for the Application Insights Javascript SDK, please check this doc: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/app/javascript-feature-extensions?tabs=javascriptwebsdkloaderscript#add-the-code

And to prevent <a> link from redirecting, you can call event.preventDefault() on click event of <a> tag.

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